The Wit and Humor of America Volume V Part 13

_Bob_--_Sm-ith_! If he was only to see one of them fine gentlemen in Augusty, with his fine broadcloth, and bell-crown hat, and shoe-boots a-shinin' like silver, he'd take to the woods and kill himself a-runnin'. Bob Smith! That's whar all your devilment comes from, Simon."

"Bob Smith's as good as anybody else, I judge; and a heap smarter than some. He showed me how to cut Jack," continued Simon, "and that's more nor some people can do, if they _have_ been to Augusty."

"If Bob Smith kin do it," said the old man, "I kin, too. I don't know it by that name; but if it's book knowledge or plain sense, and Bob kin do it, it's reasonable to s'pose that old Jed'diah Suggs won't be bothered _bad_. Is it any ways similyar to the rule of three, Simon?"

"Pretty similyar, daddy, but not adzactly," said Simon, drawing a pack from his pocket to explain. "Now, daddy," he proceeded, "you see these here four cards is what we call the Jacks. Well, now, the idee is, if you'll take the pack and mix 'em all up together, I'll take off a pa.s.sel from the top, and the bottom one of them I take off will be one of the Jacks."

"Me to mix 'em fust?" said old Jed'diah.

"Yes."

"And you not to see but the back of the top one, when you go to 'cut,'

as you call it?"

"Jist so, daddy."

"And the backs all jist' as like as kin be?" said the senior Suggs, examining the cards.

"More alike nor cow-peas," said Simon.

"It can't be done, Simon," observed the old man, with great solemnity.

"Bob Smith kin do it, and so kin I."

"It's agin nater, Simon; thar ain't a man in Augusty, nor on top of the yearth, that kin do it!"

"Daddy," said our hero, "ef you'll bet me--"

"What!" thundered old Mr. Suggs. "_Bet_, did you says?" and he came down with a _scorer_ across Simon's shoulders. "Me, Jed-diah Suggs, that's been in the Lord's sarvice these twenty years,--_me_ bet, you nasty, sa.s.sy, triflin', ugly--"

"I didn't go to say _that_, daddy; that warn't what I meant adzactly. I went to say that ef you'd let me off from this her maulin' you owe me, and _give me_ 'Bunch,' if I cut Jack, I'd _give you_ all this here silver, ef I didn't,--that's all. To be sure, I allers knowed _you_ wouldn't _bet_."

Old Mr. Suggs ascertained the exact amount of the silver which his son handed him, in an old leathern pouch, for inspection. He also, mentally, compared that sum with an imaginary one, the supposed value of a certain Indian pony, called "Bunch," which he had bought for his "old woman's"

Sunday riding, and which had sent the old lady into a fence corner the first and only time she ever mounted him. As he weighed the pouch of silver in his hand, Mr. Suggs also endeavored to a.n.a.lyze the character of the transaction proposed by Simon. "It sartinly _can't_ be nothin'

but _givin_', no way it kin be twisted," he murmured to himself. "I _know_ he can't do it, so there's no resk. What makes bettin'? The resk.

It's a one-sided business, and I'll jist let him give me all his money, and that'll put all his wild sportin' notions out of his head."

"Will you stand it, daddy?" asked Simon, by way of waking the old man up. "You mought as well, for the whippin' won't do you no good; and as for Bunch, n.o.body about the plantation won't ride him but me."

"Simon," replied the old man, "I agree to it. Your old daddy is in a close place about payin' for his land; and this here money--it's jist eleven dollars, lacking of twenty-five cents--will help out mightily.

But mind, Simon, ef anything's said about this hereafter, remember, you _give_ me the money."

"Very well, daddy; and ef the thing works up instid o' down, I s'pose we'll say you give _me_ Bunch, eh?"

"You won't never be troubled to tell how you come by Bunch; the thing's agin nater, and can't be done. What old Jed'diah Suggs knows, he knows as good as anybody. Give me them fix-ments, Simon."

Our hero handed the cards to his father, who, dropping the plow-line with which he had intended to tie Simon's hands, turned his back to that individual, in order to prevent his witnessing the operation of _mixing_. He then sat down, and very leisurely commenced shuffling the cards, making, however, an exceedingly awkward job of it. Restive _kings_ and _queens_ jumped from his hands, or obstinately refused to slide into the company of the rest of the pack. Occasionally a sprightly _knave_ would insist on _facing_ his neighbor; or, pressing his edge against another's, half double himself up, and then skip away. But Elder Jed'diah perseveringly continued his attempts to subdue the refractory, while heavy drops burst from his forehead, and ran down his cheeks. All of a sudden an idea, quick and penetrating as a rifle-ball, seemed to have entered the cranium of the old man. He chuckled audibly. The devil had suggested to Mr. Suggs an _impromptu_ "stock," which would place the chances of Simon, already sufficiently slim in the old man's opinion, without the range of possibility. Mr. Suggs forthwith proceeded to cut all the _picter ones_, so as to be certain to include the _Jacks_, and place them at the bottom, with the evident intention of keeping Simon's fingers above these when he should cut. Our hero, who was quietly looking over his father's shoulders all the time, did not seem alarmed by this disposition of the cards; on the contrary, he smiled, as if he felt perfectly confident of success, in spite of it.

"Now, daddy," said Simon, when his father had announced himself ready, "narry one of us ain't got to look at the cards, while I'm a-cuttin'; if we do, it'll spile the conjuration."

"Very well."

"And another thing: you've got to look me right dead in the eye, daddy; will you?"

"To be sure,--to be sure," said Mr. Suggs; "fire away."

Simon walked up close to his father, and placed his hand on the pack.

Old Mr. Suggs looked in Simon's eye, and Simon returned the look for about three seconds, during which a close observer might have detected a suspicious working of the wrist of the hand on the cards, but the elder Suggs did not remark it.

"Wake snakes! day's a-breakin'! Rise, Jack!" said Simon, cutting half a dozen cards from the top of the pack, and presenting the face of the bottom one for the inspection of his father.

It was the Jack of hearts!

Old Mr. Suggs staggered back several steps, with uplifted eyes and hands!

"Marciful master!" he exclaimed, "ef the boy hain't! Well, how in the round creation of the--! Ben, did you ever? To be sure and sartain, Satan has power on this yearth!" and Mr. Suggs groaned in very bitterness.

"You never seed nothin' like that in _Augusty_, did ye, daddy?" asked Simon, with a malicious wink at Ben.

"Simon, how _did_ you do it?" queried the old man, without noticing his son's question.

"Do it, daddy? Do it? 'Tain't nothin'. I done it jist as easy as--shootin'."

Whether this explanation was entirely, or in any degree, satisfactory to the perplexed mind of Elder Jed'diah Suggs can not, after the lapse of the time which has intervened, be sufficiently ascertained. It is certain, however, that he pressed the investigation no farther, but merely requested his son Benjamin to witness the fact that, in consideration of his love and affection for his son Simon, and in order to furnish the donee with the means of leaving that portion of the State of Georgia, he bestowed upon him the impracticable pony, Bunch.

"Jist so, daddy; jist so; I'll witness that. But it 'minds me mightily of the way mammy _give_ old Trailler the side of bacon last week. She a-sweepin' up the h'a'th; the meat on the table; old Trailler jumps up, gethers the bacon, and darts! Mammy arter him with the broom-stick as fur as the door, but seein' the dog has got the start, she shakes the stick at him, and hollers, 'You sa.s.sy, aigsukkin', roguish, gnatty, flop-eared varmint! take it along! take it along! I only wish 'twas full of a'snic, and ox-vomit, and blue vitrul, so as 'twould cut your interls into chitlins!' That's about the way you give Bunch to Simon."

"Oh, shuh, Ben," remarked Simon, "I wouldn't run on that way. Daddy couldn't help it; it was _predestinated_: 'Whom he hath, he will,' you know," and the rascal pulled down the under lid of his left eye at his brother. Then addressing his father, he asked, "War'n't it, daddy?"

"To be sure--to be sure--all fixed aforehand," was old Mr. Suggs' reply.

"Didn't I tell you so, Ben?" said Simon. "_I_ knowed it was all fixed aforehand," and he laughed until he was purple in the face.

"What's in ye? What are ye laughin' about?" asked the old man wrothily.

"Oh, it's so funny that it could all 'a' been _fixed aforehand_!" said Simon, and laughed louder than before. The obtusity of the Reverend Mr.

Suggs, however, prevented his making any discoveries. He fell into a brown study, and no further allusion was made to the matter.

It was evident to our hero that his father intended he should remain but one more night beneath the paternal roof. What mattered it to Simon?

He went home at night; curried and fed Bunch; whispered confidentially in his ear that he was the "fastest piece of hossflesh, accordin' to size, that ever shaded the yearth;" and then busied himself in preparing for an early start on the morrow.

Old Mr. Suggs' big red rooster had hardly ceased crowing in announcement of the coming dawn, when Simon mounted the intractable Bunch. Both were in high spirits: our hero at the idea of unrestrained license in future; and Bunch from a mesmerical transmission to himself of a portion of his master's deviltry. Simon raised himself in the stirrups, yelled a tolerably fair imitation of the Creek war-whoop, and shouted:

"I'm off, old stud! Remember the Jack-a-hearts!"

Bunch shook his little head, tucked down his tail, ran sideways, as if going to fall, and then suddenly reared, squealed, and struck off at a brisk gallop.